41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Horrible for the first-time Calculus student, April 17, 2008
This review is from: Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Stewart's Calculus Series) (Hardcover)
I am a college Calculus instructor, and I find this book terrible for many reasons. For students looking for a solid but much more inviting introduction to Calculus, I highly recommend Larson's book over Stewart's.
Here is a point-by-point breakdown of the faults I find in Stewart's text:
Clarity of Explanation and Content Level
Stewart's explanations are often verbose, unclear, and written at a
level too high for the average Calculus student. Several of my students
have told me reading the book only confused them and did not
clarify the concepts. An introductory text should offer simpler, clearer, and more concise explanations more appropriate to the typical Calculus student.
Presentation
In this day and age, students expect visually engaging presentations that will hold their attention. Stewart's presentations are drab and uninteresting. His book is everywhere packed with dense plain text and
formulas, giving the impression that Calculus is hard, dull, and very
complex, further intimidating students who are already scared of the
subject. Students are much more likely to carefully read a text that is
visually appealing and makes Calculus seem interesting and less
intimidating. This will also help reduce their anxiety over what many
already consider a very difficult course.
Readability
Another important aspect of presentation is layout and readability. Here
Stewart's text is again dismal: His pages are overstuffed with text and
graphics throughout the book, making it difficult to reference a
theorem, particular type of example, etc. It is hard to see where one
example or proof ends and another begins. The average student is not
going to read the entire contents of a section in full detail, but will
rather reference the topics s/he is having trouble with, in order to get
the details on a theorem or to find an example problem to help with a
homework exercise. This is very difficult to do in Stewart's text due to
the crowded and confusing layout.
Homework Exercises
Stewart's text is again particularly poor in terms of his homework sets in that he tends to offer a few low-level problems and then suddenly jump into extraordinarily difficult problems with no warning or transition. Stewart also tends to couch exceedingly difficult problems between a series of relatively straightforward ones, again without warning, which is very frustrating for students who find themselves struggling over what they think is an easy problem.
All in all, I strongly advise against this text, and would urge other Calculus instructors and mathematics departments to choose another Calculus book for their classes.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
crap exposition, great problems, December 20, 2009
This review is from: Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Stewart's Calculus Series) (Hardcover)
I used this textbook in a Calculus 3 course, so my primary experience is with chapters 12-16, but I did find myself referencing chapters 3, 4, 7, and 10 extensively to refresh my memory (and to learn some things I hadn't learned in high school BC Calculus).
The exposition is, for lack of a better word, "meh". It relies mostly on giving a few definitions, working through a few simple examples, then throwing hordes of problems at the reader. Now, this is perfectly fine for a lower division mathematics textbook -- such a process builds mathematical maturity (at least for me it did), but I would've liked the text, if anything, to rely *less* on showing by example and more on providing mathematical motivation for the given topics (the "big picture" of what we're trying to do, so to speak, rather than a few examples of technical details). The text's quality in this regard also has a fairly steep downward slope as the book progresses -- the text was readable and informative for, perhaps, the first 11 chapters, but from chapters 12-16 it's just really hard to learn from it on your own (and believe me, when you miss class, you have to do that).
Now, to the good part of the book (and the reason why the book gets a good 4 star rating rather than a 2 star one): problems! This book is filled to the brim with tons of exercises that range from routine to fairly difficult (and a special "problems plus" section, outside of the main exercise sets, that range from difficult to nightmarishly difficult). DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Seriously, if you are taking a course with this book, then you owe it to yourself to do the problems that are assigned at the *very least*. They are, for the most part, interesting and will help you build your mathematical ability and, more importantly, understand the material. Do extra problems, think about them, understand what you're doing instead of simply looking for the right thing to plug into. Believe me, it's worth it.
So the final verdict? The text isn't very well written and the examples are pretty poorly chosen (this especially applies to the last 1/3 of the book), but the problem sets are wonderful.
--Ashraf Eassa
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Grass WAS greener on the other side!, January 16, 2010
This review is from: Calculus: Early Transcendentals (Stewart's Calculus Series) (Hardcover)
I took the first level of Calculus during my freshman year of college, when this book was used as a required text. It was often confusing in it's working of examples and often skipped steps, as it assumed that the student would understand why. I can see how this would be O.K. for those mathematically inclined, but for me, however, it ended up being a nightmare and I constantly had to get help from the tutoring center in understanding the material. I ended up getting a C in the course at the end of the semester. When it came time to take the second level of Calculus, the textbook was changed to Rogawski's Early Transcendentals. Rogawski was a lot easier to understand, examples were worked in great detail, the text was clear and to the point, and it even provided hints. I ended the class with an A. In addition, this book is quite hefty, making it a chore to drag to school every day. If you are looking for a book that will help you understand the already difficult subject matter better, look elsewhere, preferably to Rogawski.
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